


Retrograde

by writeitright



Category: Women's Soccer RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, F/F, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-15 20:47:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29070519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writeitright/pseuds/writeitright
Summary: I'm trying not to miss the silence that begs to echo off the walls with happy noise. I’m trying to keep the endlessness I want so badly to end just out of reach. I’m trying not to miss any of it even when I can't put my finger on what it is yet. I know I am going to want to remember her. I know I can't afford to miss this moment because it feels like most other parts of my life that I have ached to fast forward through. It feels like feeling, don't miss it.Christen & Tobin slow burn.
Relationships: Tobin Heath/Christen Press
Comments: 38
Kudos: 86





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been feeling really stuck in life lately, reading all the stories and seeing the creativity in the woso community has given me a boost...so I decided to take the leap and do some writing of my own. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

"Pllleeeease Christen?" Tyler all but whined, "Please pretty please just for me?"

Christen could physically feel her resolve begin to crack as she listened to her sister tease over the phone. She smirked knowing that she wasn't going to give in quite that easy though. Christen had barely pulled into the parking spot underneath her apartment complex after work, she closed her eyes and rested her forehead against the cool leather of the steering wheel for a minute while she listened to Tyler make her case for going to this house-party.

Tyler knew if she pushed hard enough Christen would come out of guilt alone, she had told her she would come when she asked a few weeks ago, they planned a clever costume for the night and everything. But it was typical of Christen to try and bail at the last minute.

"I don't know Ty...I won't know anyone," She wasn't in the mood to go out tonight. If she had more than 10 minutes to run up a flight of stairs and switch out of her sweaty clothes into the ugly navy polo shirt she could not for the life of her remember if she washed last night before she needed to head out for her evening job, she would have taken a nap.

At least she could be thankful that Tyler had ditched the idea of them going clubbing. Going out always sounded nice in theory, and Christen always meant it when she agreed enthusiastically to one of Tyler's many extended invitations on her packed social calendar. But then the day of the event would draw closer and Christen would start to think of ways to get out of going to whatever it was. _Just in case_.

The excuses were deployed in the end more often than not, especially lately. Lately, she wasn't up for much of anything besides sleeping, working, and drinking enough coffee she could forget the gnawing in her stomach begging her to eat. Her friends and Tyler all joked that she was becoming the old man of the group.

They had discussed it in detail one night on the way back from the bar Christen had picked them up from after a night out.

_"You know Chris...I used to think you were like the mom of the group because you were always doing our hair and lending us your clothes and then you'd push us out the door with our little road snacks," Alyssa had said from the passenger seat, searching for a song on Spotify she and Tyler had heard at the first bar they went to and was insistent that Christen was going to love._

_"Yeah!" Tyler's melodic giggle came from the back seat, "Make good choices!" she said imitating Christen's "night out" catchphrase before reminding them to call her if they needed a ride and sending them on their way. Chances she was going to answer her phone from a deep sleep if it was past 10 PM was a solid 50/50 shot. When she did manage to pick them up, she was always in slippers and pyjamas._

_Absentmindedly taming the flyaway hairs peeking out from the messy bun that only gotten messier in the rush to pull a winter coat on and hop into her car, she caught Tyler's eye in the rear-view mirror and stuck her tongue out at her older sister._

_"I am so NOT the mom," the word caught in her throat a little, she thought she was past the point where it would hurt to think about the qualities of a mom. It was foreign to her now, the idea of doing or feeling anything maternal. Christen knew she was the responsible one of the group but not in a mom way._

_Tyler was more like the mom, carefully keeping all her little ducklings in a row as they hopped from pre-game to bar to house-party to club to bar to the Shawarma place around the corner from the apartment that greeted her enthusiastically by name and knew her order by heart. Tyler made sure they all ordered food and drank a Gatorade before bed to prevent as much of a hangover as they could. Tyler was reckless but in a good way. In the best ways._

_On nights like those, most of the time Christen woke up on Tyler's blue suede sectional in the middle of the night in a panic, TV blaring an episode of The Office in the background, still not sober but not drunk enough to feel good about the choices she'd made the night before. Street noise and sirens floated up four stories into Tyler's downtown apartment, all of which made Christen feel more on-edge. A pool of rice that she hadn't managed to get from the plastic fork to her mouth without missing usually surrounding her. Tyler's cat Luna would be curled up at her feet, somehow knowing that Christen was not in any way a cat person._

_But like inevitable clockwork, the memories of picking stale rice out of her curls would fade and she'd find herself in the fold of the social plans every 3-6 months. It was a cycle at this point, consistent in its inconsistency: go out, feel bad, stay in, forget how bad it feels when you go out, rinse, repeat._

_"Okay well we know that Lyss is like the uncle," Tyler pondered, and Alyssa rolled her eyes at the nickname she'd acquired in their senior year._

_Her contact in Christen's phone had always been 'Uncle Lyss' with a picture of Alyssa mid-yawn she had taken in the back seat of Tyler's beat-up little Honda Fit on the way to an early morning soccer practice. They liked to sit in the back and pretend Tyler was their chauffer, which at that point she essentially was._

_Alyssa barely resembled the girl in that photo anymore, her hair was longer now and her eyes so much brighter. She had always been lively to those that knew her well, but Alyssa's quiet demeanour had evolved to become a lot more like quiet confidence than the shyness that most people would have ascribed to her in high school. Sometimes Christen thought about changing it, there were plenty of photos of them together throughout the years at soccer tournaments or parties she could choose from but Alyssa's hatred for that photo made it so much more enjoyable every time she saw her huff dramatically when she saw the picture was still intact despite the number of phone's Christen had gone through over the course of their friendship_.

_"I'm the mom...and Christen! You're like the old-man! Because you're just wiser than the rest of us. You always know what to say and we're all like the kids on your lawn that you watch from the window and-," Tyler trailed off, breathing little clouds of fog onto her window and then writing her initials in them._

_"Alright alright okay that's enough out of both of you we get it." Christen relented with a smirk on her face._

_"FOUND IT!," Alyssa cranked the stereo in Christen's car and began to dance in her seat. Part of the reason Alyssa was so fun on a night out was the fact her size alone, towering awkwardly above the rest of their friend group, made everything she did when her sobriety had been compromised laughable._

_Tyler only fought Alyssa off the DJ duties long enough to turn the radio down to glance at Christen with a raised brow and wide eyes, Christen knowing the question before she even asked. "Shawarma time?"_

Even though they were too drunk to remember exactly what the reasons were, the roles had been solidified. Christen didn't argue, 'old man' was a role she was happy to embrace. It was much more appealing to just go home, curl up with her dog, and keep herself busy with a book or a podcast and a facemask until her well-established bedtime at 9:30. Christen liked her routine, in the middle of the tornado that her life had become having a routine was the only thing that kept her grounded.

Tyler inhales deeply, turning back to the conversation at hand.

"That's not true! You'll know me! And Alyssa will be there for a bit I think and Evan will be there. Plus you've met almost everyone else before when you've visited me at work." Tyler said, getting more and more desperate, but still trying to gently coax Christen out of her shell.

All Tyler's friends had become Christen's friends over the years too. Partially because the kind of people Tyler attracted were kind and inclusive and inviting. Partially because Christen was not the best at making friends her age. She had been painfully shy growing up and having such a bright and extroverted older sister to put in the work of cultivating a group that always had space for the little sister role in Tyler's crowd was the best-case scenario for both of them.

Christen's only constant had been her best friend, Becky. They met a few weeks into their freshman year in high school, Becky's biology partner happened to have a huge crush on Christen, and Becky was so annoyed by the distraction that she asked the partners be reassigned so that the boy could just be Christen's partner. Of course, their teacher saw right through that and paired the girls up to finish out the semester. That poor teacher had no idea the monster she was creating. If she thought Becky had been distracted before, after reassigning Christen as her partner the girls caused more problems with their incessant eye rolls and hushed inside jokes than the boy who had eyes for Christen threatening Becky's perfect grade point average ever had. Becky was in so many ways Christen's person. If friends could be soulmates, that was her and Becky. Time could pass and things could change so much but whenever they were together they just fell into the same rhythm without skipping a beat.

Alyssa and Tyler had also met in high school but they ran in different crowds until senior year. They bonded over another girl trying to drag Tyler into the middle of some drama surrounding solos in their advanced choir. They were inseparable and Alyssa became their "bonus sister", she and Christen were the calm and Tyler was always the storm dragging them out to all kinds of events. Alyssa habitually rolled her eyes but she and Tyler were a match made in friend heaven. Tyler was the life of the party. Her overflowing pool of friends from every job she worked, club she had joined, hobby she had picked up all connected seamlessly and effortlessly. She was magnetic, the kind of person that everyone wanted to be around because she was always moving a million miles an hour.

Alyssa was always right behind her, never one to plan the evening or secure the invite to an event but she basked in the chaos of the social outings once they got there. For as similar as she and Christen were, that was the one thing that Christen always admired about Alyssa. She somehow found herself in all the chaos, she was the ideal drinking game partner and once she had a few vodka sodas in her the taller girl's usually quiet voice thundered across the room making everyone who was within hearing distance of her sharp one-liners delivered with the most deadpan face laugh until they couldn't breathe. 

Christen, on the other hand, lost herself in the chaos. She ended up at these parties or on the dancefloor at a club when she either couldn't come up with an excuse that Tyler deemed acceptable, or the memories from the last night out were fuzzy enough she could convince herself to put on an outfit that felt more like a costume designed to let her feel like she fit in.

"Oh great now I really don't want to go," Christen figured that could be an out, cringing at the memory of going out with Tyler's co-worker after their entire workplace had schemed to set the two of them up for months.

Evan was the youngest one in their office and admittedly, he checked every box that she Christen had created in her mind before agreeing to date someone. He was kind and was so obviously into her, he hadn't dated a lot either so he was always nervous in an endearing way.

He did everything a stereotypically average boyfriend was supposed to do, they watched Netflix and ate ice cream until her teeth were chattering, they went out for brunch on the weekends while he rolled his barely awake eyes at Christen's enthusiasm for French toast or overpriced oat milk lattes. He bought her flowers on Valentine's Day and a beautiful bracelet with her birthstone in it on her birthday.

Christen was a picture-perfect girlfriend, approaching their relationship the same way she would have a math test or a workout, with precision and determination to ace whatever test was sure to be looming on the horizon. She went out of her way to plan special detailed dates full of his favourite things and joked effortlessly with his family around their dinner table every Friday night.

She had managed to convince herself that she was going to wake up one day and that once she got over her overwhelming urge to listen to her flight instinct while they were making out she would be fine. _She was just nervous_ , she convinced herself, _she needed time to settle_.

But the feelings on Christen's end were always entirely thought out and planned ahead of time. She couldn't stop herself from imagining the moments so vividly by the time Evan was in front of her she practically had a script to follow. It was better this way, she reasoned, no feeling ever caught her off guard when she was in the moments. Evan was an entirely safe choice and Christen had to let herself down gradually for months before she could bring herself to the realization that there was little more than friendship between them.

She had been hoping that she would feel something after she returned the flannel he left at her place, she put ice cream in her freezer and prepared for the tears she convinced herself would come. They dated for almost an entire year, but the only thing Christen felt as she watched his mailbox fade behind the homogenous rows of massive houses on the winding road that she knew like the back of her hand by then, was relief. She went home that night and felt freer and lighter than she had in a long time, she danced around her bedroom while she cleaned. An activity usually reserved for times she felt like she needed to accomplish something brought to life with her Bluetooth speaker working harder than it had in months to blast her favourite old playlist. Their relationship wasn't bad, it was just so...vanilla? Boring? Bare minimum? Christen didn't even know how to explain it to Tyler but she just knew she couldn't pretend anymore.

"No no I promise Ev won't care that you're there...he's bringing a plus one too." Tyler was talking a mile a minute now, "Either way it's no big deal you know he's with that girl his sister set him up with now." Tyler pauses, "You did know that right?"  


She hadn't known, to be fair she and Evan never kept in-touch after she broke things off. She had left pretty soon after that, since Christen had been back they only saw each other here and there when she stopped in to visit Tyler at the office or when Evan was working the food truck at one of their company's plethora of events. They were cordial, they had both grown up a lot since they dated.

Tyler didn't push her for any details, she knew she had been guilty of having talked Christen into keeping things going with Evan when Christen hedged. That was how their dynamic had always worked, Christen navigated the world with her head and Tyler followed her heart. But after Tyler realized that they had been together for months and still looked as stiff as if they'd just fumbled through the expected awkwardness of a first date that it wasn't fair to try and logic Christen into having feelings anymore.

"I feel like you're barely around anymore. You have the whole weekend off for the first time since you've been home. I already got us the costumes we talked about....and Megan is going to pick them up on her way to my place so we can pregame. Just come for a little bit and if you're not feeling it we can both leave and get Shawarma. I won't be mad I promise, everyone misses you." she was rambling now. "I just want to see you."

That much was true. After the initial adrenaline rush had worn off from so diligently cleaning up the mess of the latest round of familial fuckshit they'd been dealt this summer, they'd been guilty of burying themselves in their respective schedules. They both worked a lot now, scrambling to gather as much overtime as they could to support themselves. But Tyler's social battery seemed to be bottomless and Christen's had been unplugged at some point and she never bothered searching for the charger. Christen knew she had been more withdrawn since she got back, she could feel herself fading in and out as the weeks all bled together.

Everything came crashing down while she was an ocean away. If there was one thing that shook her more than watching the life she thought she was building slip so quickly through her fingers, it was the fact that this was not the plan. The pain of watching the plan she had worked so hard to feel satisfied with crumble around her laid her flat on her back.

Once she got back she had slowly started picking up the pieces of her life, with Tyler's help, of course. Truthfully it was terrifying to think about creating a life she felt anything remotely close to content with again, no longer naïve to the fact that anything that could be built also has the potential to fall apart. But she was getting there, she just needed time.

Even when Christen's invites to attendance ratio had looked more pathetic than ever, Tyler never stopped trying. Christen could tell her sister was worried about her, picturing Tyler's serious gaze and furrowed brow through the phone.

How bad could it be? She'd show up and do Tyler's hair like she always did when they went out, she'd just have a few drinks to soothe her sister's worries, she could stay for an hour and then head home and be in bed before midnight.

"Okay, who's Netflix and who's Chill?" Christen could hear Tyler beaming on the other end of the line knowing she had won.

\--

Megan comes through with the ridiculous Netflix and Chill shirts they had printed on short notice. Tyler throws the red Netflix one on and Christen is swimming in the blue t-shirt that could easily pass for a dress with "Chill" printed across the front of her chest.

"Talk about dressing up as something you most definitely are not, hey Pressy?" Christen rolls her eyes while she frantically tries to find any set of pants that will work with the gargantuan shirt.

"You're soooo funny Megan. How long have you been sitting on that one?" she shakes her head as she quips back. She can't even be mad, Megan was right. Not once has the word 'chill' ever been used to describe Christen Press.

Christen looks skeptically around Tyler's bedroom which has quickly become a disaster zone of makeup, hair, and like 600 outfits they had to pull out for Alyssa to try on strewn across Tyler's unmade bed. In classic Alyssa fashion, she hadn't thought far enough ahead to figure out a costume for a Halloween party.

Megan mischievously eyes the ripped black jeans Christen was in the process of pulling over her hips before saying, "Honestly Chris I don't know why you're looking for pants...didn't you basically just wear a giant shirt dress last time we went out for Halloween?"

Megan had a point, it was cold out but no snow had stuck to the ground so far this year. She was debating cropping the shirt but it would still probably look a little ridiculous.

"What the fuck were you even dressed as last time? That feels like forever ago." Megan genuinely looks like she's trying to remember but she's drunk enough the concentration it's taking makes Christen snort.

Christen has admittedly probably already had one drink too many. She can feel herself getting giggly and her composed facade is slowly falling. Historically, she doesn't have the greatest track record with drinking. She had allowed it to become an all-or-nothing endeavour. She either drank to the bottom of the bottle and puked in the cab on the way home with no memories whatsoever at the end of the night or she was sipping exclusively on water for the evening. Rarely, oh so rarely, could she walk the delicate line of an in-between state where she's nice and buzzed without crossing any limits.

Christen thinks about it for a second, smirks right back at Megan and clumsily pulls the jeans back off, looking around for a spare pair of spandex shorts she can borrow from Tyler for the evening.

"OW OWW," Megan catcalls while darting out of the bedroom into the living room jumping right up onto Tyler's coffee table where there are a few cups half-emptied of their liquor strewn around. She cups both her hands around her mouth like a megaphone, lowering her voice several octaves, "The legs are OUT to play ladies! I REPEAT we have seen legs and they are HERE to PLAY."

"What on earth are you on about Pin-" Tyler starts to chastise Megan, but stops when she sees Christen hot on Megan's heels pulling her down off the coffee table almost as quickly as she had managed to scramble up there in the first place. She puts a hand on either of her shorter friend's shoulders, staring daggers directly into her eyes trying to ignore the fact that Megan's pink hair is already sticking out several different directions. Christen tries so hard to be serious but Megan beams back with a shit-eating grin before she and Christen both erupt into a chorus of laughter. 

"I swear to god Pinoe, none of that this evening. I am begging you to take it down several hundred notches," Christen barely chokes out between giggles. "Things are different now, I can have fun without needing to let the night get away from me." Christen isn't sure whether she's reminding Megan or herself anymore, turning dramatically on her heel and heading back to the bar cart to pour herself another gin and tonic before they call an Uber.

"Wow so mature of you, Chrissy!" Tyler calls from across the living room, "In all honesty, the legs are looking wonderful and the shirt dress is perfect for the 'chill' vibe...I think you should throw on your slippers." She knows Tyler is teasing but out of spite alone she wears the slippers anyways.

Alyssa leans over and puts her arm around Christen's shoulders before raising her glass to Megan and Tyler, "Our wise-old man is back!"

\---

The party is full of all the usual suspects, it's in a little house that a co-worker of Tyler's and their roommates are hosting. If Christen didn't know better she would have assumed that it was a bunch of college stoner kids who lived in this house. The furniture is all mixed and matched, well-worn couches and a scratched dining room table set up to play beer pong with a hodgepodge collection of formal chairs lining the walls. Every room is a different shade of brown and the art on the wall ranges from tapestries to drawings that look like the work of a kindergartner displayed proudly on the fridge to huge canvas paintings that look more abstract and far too high end compared to the rest of the décor.

It's laughable to Christen, that she is so hard on herself and the state of her apartment at times when in all honesty these people are older than her and clearly far less put together. It makes her feel better for a moment, but then she thinks about how freeing it would be to so blatantly not give a shit about the way your house looks. 

She hangs out in the living room for a bit, nursing another drink while Tyler, Megan and Alyssa all catch up with their friends from work. Christen sinks slowly into the couch that smells like ketchup and Febreze, closing her eyes for just a second. Right as she can feel herself contemplating the risks associated with taking a literal nap in the middle of this party, the combination of alcohol and a twelve-hour workday finally catching up to her, someone starts playing the drum set in the corner. Christen groans and her eyes fly open, only to see Megan about six inches away from her face, clearly weighing the pros and cons of disturbing her before the drumming in the corner made that choice easy for both of them.

"She's alive!" Megan says, extending her hand to help Christen off the couch, "It's pong-o-clock...Alyssa, whom do you want to carry to victory this evening? Me?"

"Ty, who is that?" Tyler's head whips around so fast Christen catches a mouth full of hair she spent close to an hour curling to lay perfectly over her sister's shoulders. _Could you be any more obvious?_

"Ahhh, I don't know her I think she's one of Alex's roommates? I met her earlier but I can't remember her name...Taylor? Or Tori maybe? I'm not sure. Sorry, it's super loud in here I know the noise bothers you... I can get someone to ask her to stop."

"--NO." It comes out a lot firmer than she intended it, she exhales softly,"..no no everyone is having a good time with it...I just mean I don't want to embarrass her...it's good it's like-"

"It's happy noise," Tyler says, knowingly.

"Yeah...happy noise," her eyes only leaving the brunette's smile long enough to meet her eyes. She smiles back at Christen from across the room, raising her brows and nodding towards the table while everyone is waiting on Christen to throw the ping pong ball that's dangling from her hand. Christen's mouth goes dry but she manages to smile back and give her a shy wave from her post leaning against the side of the table that feels like it could give way any second. _You did not just wave at this girl...please tell me you didn't just wave._

The girl winks in response before continuing to fiddle with the drumsticks. Twirling one between her other hand while she concentrates on matching the haphazard beat that Alex decided to create when she hopped onto the girl's lap.

Growing up, the Press household had consistently been buzzing with life and laughter. Typical weeks included hosting dinner parties or pulling lawn chairs into the street with neighbourhood friends so the kids could play until the sunset beyond the ocean horizon. Their extended family lived far enough away that it became the place to vacation, all three girls would pile into Tyler's room for weeks at a time so they could host the never-ending flow of relatives who wanted to spend some time by the beach.

Their mom referred to the sounds that most of their friend's parents were quick to put out like a candle that's wax had turned entirely to liquid in a fit of impatience as a house that was just full of 'happy noise'. Happy noise was like white noise on occasions where the echoes of late-night conversations between adults over one too many glasses of wine floated up to second-story bedrooms and lulled the girls to sleep. Christen's ability to sleep through happy noise was a well-developed muscle, flexed and perfected over the many years spent as the only introvert in her family of habitually social creatures.

Her apartment-maybe her entire life- was eerily quiet in comparison to the way she grew up, her mind was what made all the noise that kept her from sleeping now. It made her wander down every road she'd never taken painstaking detail, forcing her to relive the feelings that she so desperately tried to bury under the guise of solitude and silence being her preferred state of existence.

She hadn't even realized that her life was so devoid of happy noise that she could barely name it when she heard the melodic laughter coming from the girl behind the drums. Her smile was larger than life and the way that the girl's eyes were crinkled when she turned to pull the drumstick out of Alex's hand so she could resume her playing before being dramatically yanked off her stool and upstairs to the kitchen by her roommate made Christen feel more unwound than seeing the bottom of yet another solo cup as Alyssa sunk one more shot on her end. 

"That costume is fucking hilarious," Megan says from beside Alyssa who is opposite Tyler and Christen. Christen is tanking hard, she's played beer pong fewer times than she can count on one hand. And now her shots keep getting worse because, on top of the buzz she wants to tone down once this game is over, she can't stop stealing glances over to the empty drum kit in the corner, wishing she could spot the girl with those eyes that pierced directly through the crowded room like they had waited all night to find what they were looking for. Christen closes her eyes again, a moment of meditation in the middle of this party so she won’t fall back into the undercurrent that her mind always tries desperately to pull her into when it would be easier to hide in tediously planning a future moment instead of being grateful for the present one.

_I'm trying not to miss the silence that begs to echo off the walls with happy noise. I’m trying to keep the endlessness I want so badly to end just out of reach. I’m trying not to miss any of it even when I can't put my finger on what it is yet. I know I am going to want to remember her. I know I can't afford to miss this moment because it feels like most other parts of my life that I have ached to fast forward through. It feels like feeling. Don't miss it._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiiiii thanks for your support....stay home, stay safe, stay warm!

When Christen wakes up the next morning, a pulsating headache from her social hangover traces each interaction from the night before in such detail she feels nauseous. The inescapable overstimulation feels stuck to the back of her eyelids. Every time she closes her eyes each moment is there; her mind won't even grant her the courtesy of waiting to hit play on the movie that she had unknowingly been filming.

She had experienced these types of hangovers all her life, only recently realizing that they're caused by the dynamics of an evening spent in unfamiliar company, not the shots taken with no chase. The ordeal of absorbing exorbitant amounts of information from acquaintances left her with hangovers that lingered longer than any amount of alcohol ever did.

That was how she felt today. Extremely hungover, recounting every small exchange from the night before. She was torn between not wanting to replay the scenes from last night in vivid detail and only wanting to relive every time catching her eyes felt like coming home in full technicolour high definition.

All the symptoms of this kind of hangover are the same, but the source is different. Substances are stagnant and easy to blame, easy to understand and reconcile the guilt with a very obvious regretful point of contact. They can be easily chalked up to a night out or a poor heat of the moment decision.

People, in Christen's experience, don't work that way. People are dynamic and difficult to pinpoint, their presence acts like alcohol. Her mind constantly consuming each word spoken and then coming up with a million things to say, _but none of them ever reach my voice_.

They never even make it past her tongue, sitting on the edge of being real, but never quite making an entrance into the world. _They never reach my voice_. The voice that exists in her head is an expert-level conversationalist who has a perfectly timed and eloquent response. That voice _, her voice_ , is always somewhere buried beneath the sensory overload. That voice got weaker and quieter with every passing glance that hit harder than the one too many gin and tonics she had let her friends pour her the evening before.

\-------

They play beer pong for a little longer, Alyssa staying true to her usual form by carrying her and Megan to victory and securing them a spot in the next round of the tournament. Megan insisted on calling their team “A Touch More” when Alex had asked for a team name to put on the bracket board that had was taped out on a whiteboard and housed precariously between two bookshelves on the wall.

After their gallant victory Megan, clad in a pair of pink sunglasses Christen is fairly certain are from the children’s department at Wal-Mart, announces that the two of them are going to the bathroom together.

“You look like you need a break,” Megan leaning over to whisper in her ear, and Christen just nods. Her friends all knew her well enough to know that the tight spaces and crowds of loose acquaintances were enough to send Christen into a spiral.

Christen doesn’t correct her, doesn’t say that for the first time in her life she wishes that it was louder. She wishes that the drumming would start up again, even if only to mask the sound she’s pretty sure this entire party must be able to hear of her heart beating directly out of her chest.

“Some fresh air would be great,”

“And fresh drinks!” Alyssa pipes up from beside Tyler on a tattered recliner chair, a tangled mess of N64 controllers hooked up to a TV mounted on yet another light brown wall, surrounding them.

After carefully weaving through the crowded house, Megan’s hand extended behind her to guide Christen gingerly through the maze of people. They make their way up the stairs and through the kitchen, Megan stopping briefly to exchange a quick hello with a taller brunette, Christen making a mental note to ask her about the only person she’d taken the sunglasses off so far that evening. They finally turn down a hallway where the noise is muffled and Christen feels like she can collect her thoughts for a minute up here away from all the chatter and beer-soaked carpet.

Christen pushes herself onto the bathroom counter, closing her eyes and inhaling deeply, resting her head back on the cold mirror behind her, bare legs dangling off the edge of the built-in vanity that Christen estimated to be older than she was. Now that she had stepped away from the chaos and emptied her bladder she could begin to formulate her exit strategy.

"Did I leave my phone downstairs?"

Christen spins and follows Megan's downward gaze directly into the toilet bowl in front of her. She pushes Megan off to the side and sees her phone slowly sinking to the bottom.

_Fuck_.

"Megan." Christen puts her head in her hands, squeezing her eyes shut before forcing herself to speak through gritted teeth, "Megan, please tell me you didn't just piss on my phone."

Megan doesn't say anything. Just frantically opens and closes her mouth a few times, shaking her head and averting her gaze to stare intently at the outdated light fixture on the popcorn ceiling.

They both stare at it reverently for a few seconds, a silent standoff ensues as they meet each other's eyes. Christen's green eyes are dark and unwavering. Megan huffs dramatically and reaches in to fish the phone out, scrunching up her nose and closing her eyes while she squeals.

"Ew ew ew ew ew ew ew--ew I can't believe you just made me do that."

"You're fucking dead."

"It's not my fault you dropped it in there! Why wasn't it in your pocket?"

"Megan YOU told me not to wear pants tonight. What pockets do you see on this outfit?!"

"Right, no, yeah no-- so I can see how we could maybe pin this on me but I would argue that-"

Megan turns and pulls the door open in one motion, ducking beside Christen and almost falling over the bathmat in a dramatic rush to bolt out the door before Christen can chastise her any further. Christen's pretty sure she hears her trip over her own feet somewhere down the hallway, a loud bang echoing off the narrow corridor.

_She's such a menace when she's drunk._

She rolls her eyes and finishes towelling the phone off next to the sink, debating whether she should be trying to rinse it off with soap and more water after what it went through or not. Christen's left in the bathroom, fluorescent light fixture making her head spin, the door still ajar while she alternates between holding down the button on the side of her phone and quietly begging it to turn on for what feels like hours.

Not only is she way too attached to the stupid old model of iPhone with a physical button on it to try and have this phone replaced, but she's also pretty sure there's no way she can afford a new one anytime soon.

She sees a mess of dark hair fly past the door out of the corner of her eye, but she's not paying enough attention to hear Alex turn back and stick her head into the bathroom, both arms resting on either side of the doorframe leaning hesitantly into space.

"Everything okay in here?"

Christen jumps back, dropping the phone into the sink, "Oh I didn't see you there, you scared me. I- uh...Sorry...I can get out of here." She scrambles to collect the phone, dropping it on the ground in the process.

Alex starts to lean down, reaching to retrieve the phone for her, "NO! You DO NOT want to touch that," this time it's Alex who jumps back, eyes frantic.

  
"I am so sorry I didn't mean to-"  
  
"No no," Christen smiles and sighs, knowing that must have come out a little louder than she anticipated. Her normally subdued voice echoing forcefully across the blue-tiled bathroom walls, "it's okay it's just... it fell into the toilet and Pinoe peed on it before I realized it was in there," Christen picks the phone up delicately dangling it between her middle finger and thumb, realizing it was unquestionably going to need to be disinfected before trying to revive it.

Alex stifles a laugh, "Oh my god, we really can't take her anywhere can we?"

Christen just shakes her head, thinking about the million and one times Megan's clumsiness on a night out had ended in some mishap or another.

"Ugh, that's such a pain...I hate getting new phones. I never remember to back my phone up to the cloud and then it's like a whole process of trying to find all your contacts again…" Alex's raspy voice was the clearest one she'd heard all night, _she's hosting...of course, she's mostly sober._ "Do you want to go find something to wipe it down with? We probably have something in the kitchen."

Relief flooded Christen's body, her shoulders relaxing and her jaw slightly unclenching. Her buzz had worn off significantly and she felt loose enough to have a good time but not anywhere near drunk enough to match the anarchy that was occurring back downstairs where the beer pong and flip cup tournaments were growing rowdier by the minute. She nodded and offered a small smile, following Alex out of the bathroom.

Christen had met Alex a few times, she was newer to Tyler's office before Christen had left. They'd been introduced at a company Christmas party where their CEO had arranged for all the employees and their guests to sample bourbon in a softly lit rooftop bar that Christen wouldn't have ever had to worry about being caught dead at because she wouldn't have been able to afford it in the first place.

Christen vividly remembered the feeling of her leg falling asleep while sitting through what felt like hours of speeches about company culture, vowing that she'd run away from any job that tried to reel her in with predictable buzzwords like 'synergy' or 'impact'.

It was all so disingenuous to her. Listening to the CEO of a moderately successful small business that employed fresh college grads to viscously underpay them go on and on about giving back to the community in such superficial ways made her stomach churn. But Tyler and all her coworkers seemed to love it, so she smiled politely and drank enough expensive bourbon to make their boss's eyes roaming up and down her legs all night tolerable.

It had been only a few months since she and Evan had split up at that point and Christen was determined to make it known that she had moved on. She figured that was going to be a much larger task than it turned out to be. Standing in front of him reminded her of how the feelings were never mutual. They were completely a fragment of her own contrivance, merely an exercise in determination just to prove to herself and everyone else who had ever regarded her as frigid and closed off that she was capable of being in a relationship.

She had fun that night, being the plus one to a party full of free high-end liquor was hardly draining. There were no expectations, she got to act like a fly on the wall when she was with Tyler's crowd in their element, quietly observing their dynamic from the outside.

The look on Evan's face that night let her know he was far from over his feelings, which was fascinating in all the wrong ways. She wanted so badly to ask him if he honestly had no idea that she had been forcing, faking, or flailing through every encounter. _How could he not know? Maybe I was a better actress than I thought._

She genuinely wanted to study the look in his eyes when he overheard her tell his friends that the best part of dating him had been the fact that it made her question everything about what she wanted in a person. _It made her question if she was even capable of wanting a person._

"I feel like I haven't seen you in forever! Tyler said you were away...where were you again?" Alex's voice brings her back to the dimly lit hallway as her slippers drag across the creaky hardwood floors. This whole place is so opposite of Alex, Christen tries to imagine her just existing in this space which comes across as far too inadequate to house someone so charismatic. _How does she live here?_

Christen had zoned out, spotting the familiar mess of brunette hair leaning casually against the door frame at the top of the stairs leading back down to the basement. She had a beer in one hand and was talking animatedly with someone who she couldn't see behind the mess of people strewn across the room between them. Megan had been right earlier...the costume was pretty funny. She and Alex had obviously coordinated, both wearing khaki shorts, snapbacks, and button-down shirts. Alex's shirt was the same shade of baby blue as her eyes, a tie loosely hung around her neck. They both had nametags with "Brad" and "Chad" printed in sloppy sharpie scrawl across their chests- they were dressed as frat bros and Christen had to admit it was incredibly clever.

Downstairs after Alex and the girl had beat some of the guys in a game of flip cup, they chest bumped and lowered their voices a few octaves to pretend to talk about Bitcoin and their hedge funds before dissolving into a pile of laughter. Their house matched that aesthetic, one of beer pong and Bitcoin, not one of the drop-dead gorgeous brunettes.

Christen admired the girl absentmindedly, eyes trailing down from the backwards black hat she was trying to read the writing on from behind the kitchen counter to the crisp white button-down that was undeniably more unbuttoned than it had been when she watched her playing the drums earlier. The edge of the girl's black sports bra now visible, her shirt now cuffed up to her elbows, her cheeks now more flushed as the growing population in the small house drove the temperature and volume higher and higher.

"Christen?"  
  
"Oh uh - yeah," she let out a breath she didn't know she was holding, snapping her eyes back up to Alex’s, "Yeah I was away, I came back in the Spring."  
  
"Well, I know Tyler is excited to have you back. She talks about you all the time in the office." Alex smiles softly, adding, "She's super proud of you...we all are." Most of Tyler's coworkers knew the SparkNotes version of what had gone down since Christen came home.

There’s nothing much to say to that, so Christen just nodded while looking down to pick at a loose nail on her finger. She didn’t feel proud…she mostly just felt awkward about everything and she hated the pity that came along with people knowing about all of it. In Alex’s defence, Christen reasons, she probably doesn’t know anywhere near _all_ of it and it was a nice thing for her to say.

“Hey, Tobes?” Alex said with her head in a cabinet, which muffled her words enough to make them barely audible, reaching back to hand Christen some Lysol wipes. “Tobin?” she called, louder this time over her shoulder directly in towards the stairwell.

_Tobin. That was her name._

Christen's mind was already spinning, any resemblance of composure she had garnered in the bathroom now long gone. She always wondered how people with unique names managed to live up to the responsibility of being unique in their own right. A name like Christen doesn’t demand any such exceptionality.

_Tobin._

It sounded familiar but Christen couldn't quite figure out why.

Tobin glances over at Alex, quirking her brow as she walks towards the kitchen, setting her beer down.

“Sup?” She nods at her roommate and then locks eyes with Christen for the first time in such proximity.

“Tobe this is Christen, Tyler’s sister.” Alex introduces them and Tobin smiles softly giving Christen a little wave, just like the one she had sent her way earlier in the evening. Christen groans internally, knowing she must have looked even dumber than she thought down there.

She finally brings herself down enough from the original shock to meet Tobin’s eyes across the small kitchen island that the brunette was pulling out a stool to sit at. She sinks heavily onto one barstool and casually extends an arm across the back of the empty chair next to her and sits with her legs pointing out opposite directions. It makes Christen wonder if it was part of channelling her inner frat bro or if she just sat like that all the time. It looked a little too unrehearsed to have been anything but the latter.

_Those eyes._ They looked right into her, that expression of someone looking through you was so cliché and dismissive in a way…why would you want anyone to see right through you? Doesn’t being see-through presuppose a certain level of shallowness? This was different, these eyes felt like breathing fresh mountain air or a cool breeze hitting your back while you walk along the beach. They were intense but soft and inviting. This felt like being _seen_ , not seen through.

“Pinoe peed on her phone, can we let her borrow some of your rice to try and dry it out?”

“Pinoe WHAT!?”

“--She didn’t mean to…it was my fault I dropped it in there and then Megan started-” Christen shakes her head, looking down at the speckled countertop while smiling at the ridiculousness of knowing that telling people Megan had straight up peed on her phone in the middle of a house party was somewhat plausible based on Megan’s track records at these types of events. “I- it was my bad.”

Tobin smiles a little, and cocks her head sideways at her roommate, “Al, how is someone supposed to ‘borrow’ rice?” Her voice is so much deeper than Christen expected, “You don’t need to borrow it…you can just keep it. Especially after it comes into contact with that biohazard.” She nods towards the phone that’s sitting on the island between them, still showing no signs of life.

“Whatever you say, your royal highness,” Alex rolls her eyes, filling a Ziploc bag up with rice and handing it to Christen so she can safely submerge her phone in the beige grain.

\------

Prior to their introduction, Christen had been itching to leave, midnight had been fast approaching and she could feel Tyler’s couch calling her name from across town. But now the only thing she could find herself sinking into was watching Tobin’s fingers softly squish the rice around her phone, fiddling with the plastic bad like it was a stress ball.

Alex had gone back downstairs to referee the next round of beer-pong, leaving the two of them upstairs mostly alone in the kitchen. A few guests coming in and out to make new drinks or pass through in search of the bathroom.

"So how do you know Evan?"

"Oh I- I don't. Not very well anyway."

"I just assumed because you guys were talking back there," Christen nods towards the staircase where Evan had been enthusiastically thanking Tobin for hosting and asking her a few questions that Christen had to physically restrain herself from trying to eavesdrop on from where she was perched at the kitchen island.

She and Evan had exchanged pleasantries earlier that evening, catching up a little on what he was up to at the company. Christen swiftly redirecting all inquiries about the state of her life back to questions about how his family was and if his Grandma’s dog was finally able to have the eye surgery they had been saving up for last time she'd attended a family dinner.  
  
When Tobin gave Evan a light hug and a clap on the back, promising to ‘see him around’ Christen’s curiosity had heightened. She was even more surprised when Tobin didn’t just make her way quietly back down the stairs, instead, pouring the rest of her half-finished beer down the sink and plopping herself directly back in the barstool next to Christen. _Oh, so she just sits like that all the time._

"Yeah, I've been doing some of the photography for James since things have picked up there so much lately. The girl that runs the company’s social media needed some help and Alex put in a good word for me I guess." Her hands absentmindedly rubbing the back of her neck. "I ended up following Evan around the first day I was there while he did his deliveries. He was a good sport about me shoving a camera in his face all day."

Christen grimaced, thinking about how she used to be a stop on that delivery route- a benefit of dating the delivery driver had been getting products left on her doorstep that greeted her every Tuesday on her way out the door.

"Not a fan?" Tobin asked, brows furrowing, but a knowing smirk forming on her lips.

"Oh no- I...we...Evan and I. We used to-" J _ust spit it out. Why can't you just say it? Is it that embarrassing that we can’t even talk about it anymore?_

"Used to be together?" Tobin offers, drawing each word out slowly, a rise in her voice making it sound like a question and a statement.

Christen cringes, unconsciously crinkling her nose, her distaste must have been written all over her face because Tobin is full-on smirking now, her face painted with a look that suggests she knows something Christen has yet to figure out.

“Oh yeah! No no he is…he’s a great guy. Yeah, a super nice guy. Really nice guy...,” The end of her sentence trails off getting quieter with every word. The gears in her head spinning faster than she can keep up with. _Why are you rambling? Please I am begging you, slow your brain down._

Tobin waits, an expectant look on her face. Christen’s not sure what else she’s supposed to say, _am I missing something?_

“What?”

“Nothing, I just-“ Tobin shakes her head before looking at Christen like she’s trying to convey something incredibly complex to a kindergartner, “he’s not _that_ nice. I wouldn’t call him _really_ nice. Definitely wouldn’t call him _great_. I can’t picture the two of you together.”

Christen half-smiles her mouth opening to say something, but closing it instead, a smirk on her face. She looks up at the ceiling, and closes her eyes, begging her buzzed brain to say something kind instead of bursting out into insensitive laughter. _Maybe, Alex, is the only host staying entirely sober this evening._

“I’m sorry I shouldn’t have said that- that was super uncalled for Evan...Evan is great-“

“No,” She reaches across and puts a hand on Tobin’s thigh, squeezing it for a fraction of a second. “I’m glad you said it. Thank you for saying that.”

Tobin looks down at the contact, Christen feeling like her hand is being burned the same way it was when she accidentally touched the hot element on her stove last week while making dinner, but she can’t bring herself to pull it away.

Christen stares at her own hand for a few seconds more before moving it back into her lap, she _hates_ being touched usually. Hates touching others too, _maybe it’s the alcohol._

“Oh uh…you’re welcome? I guess?” Tobin scratches the back of her neck, cheeks filling back up with colour after looking so pale for a second in the silence between her remarks and Christen’s hand landing on her leg.

“You’re right, he’s mediocre at best.” _Okay so, not kind, per se_. But it was honest. She’s not sure how she can lie to those eyes that just keep _seeing_ her.

Her sobriety is questionable, but she’s never been able to vocalize that to anyone without worrying about whether or not she had been perceiving it all wrong. Without worrying that maybe she was just as mediocre as he was.

“He strikes me as like…I don’t know…” Tobin searches for the right words, her eyes staring intently at the bag of rice between them before her eyes light up and she pokes the bag a few times with a mischievous smirk forming at the edges of her mouth.

“Okay so think of it this way, dating people is like going to the free breakfast at a Hotel. Everyone has their preferences but nobody wants to be limited by the selection…Evan…Evan is like only being offered plain oatmeal. Sure it’ll give you some energy and it’s a solid option but someone like you...”

Tobin exhales, meeting Christen’s eyes for a split second before moving them slowly down past dark curls, over the huge blue t-shirt that barely covers the top half of Christen’s toned thighs, eyes lingering over her calves. She turns her head to the side and pushes one of her eyebrows up higher than the other, “….you deserve an entire buffet.”

Christen rolls her eyes, writing that off as a half-sober thought. But the longer she thinks about plain oatmeal, and what an unfortunately apt comparison that was, she has to cover her mouth to keep from laughing. Tobin’s eyes find hers and she can’t stop herself from reaching her hand back across the gap between them to find Tobin’s thigh and squeeze it a little harder this time, a little higher up the leg this time and Christen’s not sure she’s ever felt as turned on in all her life with such little contact.

_Turned on? No, no you’re just warm- this is like the pep talk Megan was supposed to give you in the bathroom. Just two drunk girls hyping each other up, that’s all._

Before she can sort through the excuses running around the peripheral of her mind at a hundred miles an hour that are all screaming at her to step unsuspiciously out the door across the kitchen, get some crisp fall evening air and cool off for a minute in the backyard, Tobin’s hand right-hand squeezes her thigh twice while her left absentmindedly continues to fiddle with the bag of rice. Christen can’t bring herself to look over because she’s pretty sure if she looked into those glistening golden eyes while Tobin’s hand was resting on her bare thigh she might burst into flames.

Eventually, the hand is withdrawn, both of them sitting silently for a minute.

“Are you from Seattle?” Tobin breaks the tension, shifting a little to look more closely at the greenest eyes she’s ever seen.

“No, I grew up in California. We moved here when I was in junior high…for my dad’s work.”

“Ohhhh cool cool. You seem to know everyone super well, I’m surprised we haven’t met before…have we?”  
  


Christen looks sideways at her, pleading her brain to pick something, quite literally anything to say.

“I was away for a while, I was uh- yeah I was overseas. I just moved back a few months ago. Usually, Tyler tries to drag me out to all the company events but things have been a bit…uh- hectic since I got back.” She fumbles out _, please stop stuttering._

"Ahhh back in with the ‘rents?" 

She doesn’t know why she says it, she's never actually vocalized the thought that runs through her mind every time she closes her eyes. The reminder she uses as a device that even though people could be understanding, most people wouldn’t understand. She hasn’t mentioned her weird little mantra to anyone, not even Tyler because she knows Tyler’s version of events has a different ending. But something about the assumption makes her flash hot with embarrassment and then anger.

She bites her lip for a second, hoping that if she can feel something besides mortification for a split second, she’ll be able to collect her thoughts enough to come up with an obscure deflection. _Maybe you should bite your tongue instead._

"I don't have parents," as soon as the words fall off the tip of her tongue she wants to get up and walk directly out the front door, find some grass, lay down in it, look up at the moon and scream until she can’t breathe. The room feels like it's getting smaller and smaller and this is not the can of worms she was hoping to open tonight.

There is nothing more awkward than the look of pity that typically accompanies that revelation, and it's worse that she barely knows Tobin. She does not want to have to deal with an explanation right now or ideally ever.

Christen had shifted awkwardly off to the very edge of her stool, hoping to put a little more space between her and Tobin, subconsciously dragging a familiar shovel out of her mind, preparing to dig herself out of the hole that hadn’t threatened to consume her in a while.

Caught off guard, but not necessarily by surprise, she feels a little squeeze on her thigh. This time a little slower, a little less heat, like Tobin was letting Christen know that she didn’t need to offer any explanation. Tobin’s hand stays there, rubbing her thumb gently across exposed skin and sending a shiver up Christen’s spine.

  
Like clockwork, Tyler appears at the top of the stairs, scrambling across the slippery hardwood to where the two of them are sitting and plops down on the stool beside her.

“Where were you? I texted you like an hour ago I was getting worried you got lost on your way back from the bathroom.” Tyler says, panting like she’s out of breath from running up the stairs.

Christen says nothing, holding up the plastic bag, her phone just barely peeking out from behind the rice, only a corner of her yellow case visible.

Tyler sighs, shaking her head. “Pinoe?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who's read this far. Your comments and feedback gave me the courage to daydream a little more about this story...  
> let me know your thoughts <3


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright well, the first two chapters of this story lived in my head for a long time and writing them out sort of just happened in a weekend without much planning for a long-fic. buuuuuut i think i have some more ideas about what to do with this sweet summer child of mine. 
> 
> thank you for continuing to read <3

Normally after a night out Christen would be pouring over the tagged photos on her Instagram or catching up on any embarrassing Snapchats. But with her phone out of commission, she felt a little more at peace with the idea that she couldn’t attempt to control anything that had been posted without her permission. She felt less at peace with the fact it also meant she wouldn’t be able to creep the golden-eyed girl’s Instagram for the foreseeable future.

Maybe creep was a strong word. Christen was just curious about Tobin. Curious about why she was so forthcoming with someone she had never met, curious about what Tobin was thinking when they had instantaneously developed a little code of hands-on thighs, curious about what kind of coffee she drank and how her hair still managed to look so radiant under the incandescent lights in the kitchen.

_Just curious._

"Mal?" Christen called into their apartment, dropping her keys on the table in the entryway. She was clad once again in the outfit she had worn to Tyler's apartment the night before.

Christen paused for a moment in the kitchen, gently placing the plastic bag of rice that had become crinkled and smudged with fingerprints like the page of a book after it had been read several times down on their kitchen table.

After an evening being poked, prodded, stuffed in jacket pockets, and carried across town in an Uber, the bag of rice looked as tired from toting around the decrepit phone as Christen felt upon finally entering the quiet solace of her apartment.

She wasn't hungover, but the legs that carried her up the stairs from the parking garage were getting heavier by the second and she desperately wanted to curl up by the fireplace for an afternoon nap before tackling her to-do list that was a mile long and now included figuring out what to do with her phone.

One part of last night had kept her from getting any sleep. One conversation, _one person,_ had taken up residence in a corner of her mind. Every time she closed her eyes to try and catch just a few minutes of sleep on Tyler's couch, that hand on her thigh played on a loop.

Having an entire weekend off was rare and Christen had envisioned catching up on sleep, laundry, cleaning, grocery shopping and all the other various tasks that would be pushed to the wayside during a busy week.

As she passed through the small living area to Mal's bedroom, she began making a mental checklist of all the errands the two of them would need to get done tomorrow.

Her younger sister’s melodic laughter filtering through the thin white door separating her bedroom from the rest of the apartment interrupted her train of thought.

"Mallory?" she cracked the door open slowly.

"Hey," Mal greets her from her bed. She's laying backwards with her head in the middle of the mattress, legs balanced on the wall behind her, a mess of dark brown hair surrounding splayed across her duvet cover. "How was the party?"  


"It was alright, Ty says she can take you to your game tomorrow....hey do you still have your old phone?"

"Say bye to Rose!" Mal pans the camera on the front of her phone over to where Christen is leaning against the doorframe, the two girls giggling almost hysterically, no doubt talking about Rose's recent very public prom-posal in their high school's parking lot.

"Bye to Rose," Christen sends back, offering Rose a small smile and a wink through the screen while Mal shifts to hop off the side of her bed.

"Yeah, yeah I think so....why?"

Christen recounted the tragic loss of her phone in the bathroom to Mal, glossing over the details about exactly _who_ the rice her phone was currently bathing in belonged to.

"Megan, Megan, Megan....," Mal shakes her head slowly, "I mean I don't know if it'll even turn on but like- you can give it a try," Mal says as she rummages through a desk drawer, pulling out a long charger and a hot pink Motorola Razr.

"You're not coming to the game tomorrow?"

"No, I'm busy."

"I thought you had the whole weekend off."

"I do I'm just--"

  
  
Mal's eyes light up the same way they used to when their mom would pick them up from school and offer to go get ice cream as a surprise treat.

"Christen please?! You haven't seen me play since you've been back and I feel like I'm finally getting into a groove again...but I still need your help with-"

"Mal I can't,"

  
  
"Why not?"

  
  
"I just...I can't."

"But _why_ Christen I-

"I just CAN'T MAL!" Her hands fly instinctually to slick the flyaway hairs that slipped out of her bun back into place. Squeezing her eyes shut so hard she could see little flickers of colour pop behind her eyelids like fireworks, Christen exhales and counts to three, centring herself before continuing.

"I can't. So just drop it. Tyler will be there,"

Mal knew better than to say anything more, knew better than to push Christen to bend when she was seconds away from breaking. As quick as that spark in her eyes had filtered in, making her brown orbs shine gold for just a second, it was gone.

She stepped across the room, handing Christen the phone and charger. Her eyes held tears that teetered on the edge of her lower lash line, threatening to escape if she looked anywhere but the vinyl floor designed to imitate hardwood between them. She closed the door softly, leaving that familiar white wood inches away from Christen’s face.

Christen wanted to cry herself, _she's so good she won’t even slam the door in your face when she has every reason to._

She was so tired of being tired, angry at the fact she couldn't stop being angry. Especially because this wasn't the first time she'd lost her temper with Mal in recent weeks. Her sweet little Mal, who she had promised that she would go to the ends of the earth to protect. Mal who was the light of her life, who made everything better, who was somehow equal parts innocent and impressively bold. _Just like you used to be._

Barely tipping herself forward, she closed her eyes again, leaning her forehead against the door while she thought back to when they were both much younger.

_Ice cream had become a more frequent endeavour, the last three Fridays in a row Stacy had collected Christen and Mal from school to go waste time in the park with sickeningly sweet scoops until Tyler was finished with her after-school drama club. Christen was beginning to wonder if they were being bribed or if their parents were placating them before giving them some unpleasant news._

_Stacy took one of Christen's braids in between her fingers, smoothing it down against her shoulder as Christen worked away at finishing her mint-chocolate chip ice cream before it melted._

_Christen wondered out loud why they were eating so much sugar all of a sudden._

_"It's always when I've had a long day," Stacy had revealed, saying it softly enough that it felt like a secret to be kept between just the two of them._

_"When you've had a long day?" Christen's brows furrowed, eyes catching a trail of ants a few feet in front of her, marching across the sidewalk and disappearing into a crack in the concrete. "Mom, you don't even eat ice cream."_

_"I know baby," Stacy smiles, pressing a soft kiss to the crown of Christen's hair._

_Christen was composed entirely of long limbs and loose curls in those days._

_"You're right. I don't eat ice cream...but when I've had an exceptionally long or particularly frustrating morning where I just want to scrap the whole day and start over tomorrow, I remind myself of the joy you girls have over something as simple as ice cream."_

_"Mom if you're sad you know what you should get to cheer you up?"  
  
"What's that Chrissy?"_

_"Ice cream! I'll even share some of mine with you...I know Mal won't but I will..."  
  
"It's not so much about the ice cream, sweet girl. You know how excited Mal gets whenever I suggest we go get a treat?"_

_Christen giggles, catching Mal out of the corner of her eye. Her lopsided pigtails that had come loose after a day at school ran circles around the other kids at the playground in their favourite park. She was racing a boy who must have been a few years older than her up the slide instead of sliding down. Typical Mal, Christen thought, always finding a more creative way to get the same thing done._

_"Yeeeeahhh...?" Christen draws out, Mal is in first grade. Of course, she's excited about sugar. "It usually looks like she's about to burst right out of her seatbelt,"_

_"Exactly, and where do you see her ice cream now?"  
  
Christen looks around, spying a half-eaten mostly melted cup of rainbow sorbet off to the side of the bench where she and Stacy were watching the younger girl play. _

_"It's not about the ice cream. It's about joy. The way Mal's eyes light up gives me a little boost on a hard day. She reminds me that even though things might not have gone my way so far there's still a whole lot of day left to live and I owe it to myself to find some joy," Stacy wraps an arm around Christen's shoulder, folding her into her side._

Christen exhaled slowly, breath turning back to hit her in the face as it ricocheted off the door.

_Things were supposed to get so much easier for her, don’t make it harder because you’re a coward._

“Mal?”

There was no response but Christen inched the door open again to find Mal laying face down on her bed, sniffling so quietly into a pillow that it could have been mistaken for breathing.

“Can I come in?”  
  


She didn’t wait for a response, instead opting to curl herself behind Mal on the bed, reaching around the smaller girl and tucking her hair behind her ear before leaving a faint kiss on her cheek. She ran her fingers up and down Mal’s bicep in an effort to soothe her younger sister. She watched as little drops of salty tears collected on Mal’s blue pillowcase, her heart cracking a little more with each one shed.

When they moved out, Mal was devastated to be leaving her childhood bedroom behind. It had been a labour of love that Christen and Stacy had surprised her with while she was away at a soccer tournament one weekend. Mal had been complaining that her pink and white walls were no longer suitable for a girl going into grade school. They had spent the better portion of 48 hours painting them light blue and installing a fancy little chandelier to hand over a new queen-sized bed. _Princess Mal_ , they had joked, she was the baby of the family and they were all guilty of spoiling her.

Even though they had a wonderful landlord now who was incredibly understanding of their situation, their apartment was strict about painting so the plain white walls had been left mostly undecorated. Christen and Tyler had searched high and low, scouring the depths of the internet for a bedding set that would match the walls Mal had been forced to leave behind. Eventually, they landed on this quilted duvet cover to replace the plain white comforter that they had brought with them in a rush.

Mal had cried then too because she was so happy to have a piece of home here with her at the apartment. Those were happy tears. These were big crocodile tears that made Christen want to offer Mal the world on a silver platter.

“Shhhh, Sunshine I’m sorry,” she cooed into Mal’s ear, drawing circles on her arm. “I shouldn’t have gotten so upset with you, I’m just tired.”

Mal sniffed a few more times, wiping stray tears from the corners of her eyes before rolling over to face Christen, burying her head in the crook of the older girl’s neck.

“Why do you hate watching me play?”

“I don’t hate watching you play, of course I don’t! Why would you think that?”

“Because you always try to get out of it, even when you have time to come to a game or a practice or to help me get some shots on goal after work you won’t…am I that bad?”

“No, sweet girl. You’re incredible and I _love_ to watch you play…”  
  
“Christen you haven’t seen me play in years! Not since you left.”  
  
Christen sighed, stroking Mal’s hair while the younger girl sobbed into her chest. She had always reminded herself that it was just easier this way. Easier to stay in the car, easier to drop Mal off and come back, easier to separate herself from the one thing that had made her feel alive.

“Sunshine, you are extraordinary. Every single one of your coaches makes a point to tell all of us how special you are. You don’t need my help, you never have.”

  
She glances up through eyelashes that had clumped together, saturated by briny tears.

“But what if I _want_ it.”

_I owe it to myself to find some joy._

\--

Christen rearranges her schedule, skips the nap that had been calling her name, and manages to cram an entire weekend’s worth of chores into an afternoon so that she can drive Mal along with her beat-up black and blue soccer bag across town to her club game.

The embarrassingly outdated flip-phone that had been passed down from Tyler to Christen, Christen to Mal, and Mal to the depths of a desk drawer had come back to life as soon as Christen had been able to remove the SIM card from her old phone that was pronounced DOA by the Apple Genius Bar employee who confirmed that:

“Unfortunately, no. Apple Care does not cover your friend accidentally peeing on your phone in the middle of a party.” 

_I’ll be fine, a digital detox is an opportunity to reset and refocus. A chance to live more in the present._

Mal’s giddiness in the passenger seat was contagious, the two of them scream-singing along to the bridge of All Too Well as they drove under the familiar canopy of changing leaves during a Seattle fall. The vibrating bass reverberating through Christen’s sedan was slowly but surely steadying her heartrate. Mal was full of the same childlike enthusiasm as a surprise Friday ice cream.

She had woken Christen up extra early asking if she would braid her hair for the game. Christen reaches across the middle console while they sit at a stoplight to tuck a few wispy little flyaway hairs peeking out of her pink pre-wrap headband back behind her ears. Mal is chattering away, words flowing a mile a minute about their coach's plan for the game.

 _My joy_.

They pull up to a tree-lined field in the middle of a quiet suburban street in Bellevue. Christen barely has the chance to kill the engine before Mal is dragging her by the hand across the parking lot towards the bleachers. She gives Christen explicit instructions to pay extra attention to her left-footed cross so she can help her polish it up before her travel team heads off to a tournament in Portland next week.

Mal spots Rose’s family with their dog Wilma and a few other teammates loitering off to one side of the pitch starting to stretch and pull their cleats on. Mal bounces around the thin white perimeter of the field to join them, leaving Christen alone next to the rows of cold metal bleachers that cast the sun back up towards the sky like a mirror every time the clouds part to reveal a cyan-blue backdrop overhead.

_The sun is literally shining, the birds are literally chirping. Message received, Mom._

Christen finds herself surrounded by a crowd of parents, players, and coaches all bundled up on the sidelines waiting for what looked like two teams of kids who couldn’t have been much older than ten or eleven to finish their match.

While Mal is off getting warmed up and Christen is waiting for Tyler and Alyssa to join her in what they affectionately refer to as the ‘VIP- Very Important Press’ fan zone, she finds herself mesmerized by one little girl on a team full of boys in red jerseys. She dribbles through defenders and bolts across the field every time the ball lands at her feet. But without fail, every single time she’s in front of the net, somehow always with enough space to easily tap the ball past the goalkeeper, she passes it to a teammate.  
  
Her little blonde ponytail dances behind her in the autumn wind, her socks are rolled down beside her ankles and a humble smile catches the corner of her lips for just a second every time a teammate scores off her assist. In the 75th minute of their game, she earns a corner kick which one of the boys on her team walks over to line up for before a coach called him off, instead directing the girl to take it.

She knocks a wicked curveball into the box, placed perfectly to fly off a forehead into the upper left corner. As soon as their celebration concludes, she was back to weaving through crowds of kids and dropping the ball off for a teammate to sink into the back of the net like it was the most effortless activity in the world. It was all finesse, an artful dance with the ball that was far beyond her years.

“He’s coming home soon right?” Christen overhears Alyssa ask Tyler from behind her. She doesn’t turn around immediately, wanting to eavesdrop a little more about their discussion.  
  


“Yeah…yeah, he’s halfway done the program so I’ll go pick him up and spend the weekend in Denver after the holidays so he can be discharged. There are some group activities and they teach us about how to support him when he gets back.”

“You’re going by yourself?”  
  
“His insurance only pays for one person to go. Mal’s not eighteen yet and Christen-”

“-Is right there! Hi Chris!” Alyssa interjects, stepping around a few parents to find her way to sit on one side of Christen on the bottom row of bleachers, Tyler quickly dropping onto the other side, letting out a gasp when she makes contact with the frigid metal.

  
Alyssa offers her a paper cup, ‘oat milk latte’ written across the top of the lid in loopy scrawl. Christen immediately wraps her hands around the scalding cup to keep them warm. The smell of fresh espresso filling her nose and distracting her momentarily from the fact that she was already only a few short months away from being able to exist peacefully in downtown Seattle without scouring every grocery store parking lot for his car before being able to shop in peace.

“Hi, Lyss.” Christen smiles “Thanks for coming.”

“Couldn’t miss my favourite Press playing my favourite game,” she lowers her gaze enough to wink down at Christen.

“We should be thanking you for gracing the pitch with your presence,” Tyler wraps both hands around Christen’s waist from beside her in a comforting squeeze, resting her chin on her younger sister’s shoulder.

It was an unspoken rule, the fact that Christen wasn’t going to be interested in anything soccer-related when she came back from Sweden. It wasn’t surprising, everyone who knew her was well aware of the fact that she liked clean breaks and explicitly defined boundaries.

Christen felt she was her best when her life was like one of those plates she used to insist on using a child. Each section had a little wall that prevented her corn from mixing with her chicken casserole. When things were separate, the food tasted better. Life worked that way too. When one chapter was closed it was better to focus on writing a new one instead of reliving one you’d just left behind.

Recently there was this nagging feeling that she had both literally and figuratively too much on her plate these days to keep everything divided. She knew that the food was going to start being lumped together if she wasn’t careful.

Sweden had been a clean break, a little pile of peas pushed back to the corner of her plate tucked safely away from affecting the present. She needed a way out and Mal and Tyler needed her to come home. It was, for all intents and purposes, the best situation for everyone involved.

Walking through each step of the logical reasoning that it was the right decision didn’t make it any easier to sit as a spectator on the figurative sidelines of everyone else’s life. She watched her friends who had finished school years ago land exciting jobs and begin the predictable climb up corporate ladders, meanwhile, Christen was anxiously trying to find the base of a sturdy ladder that she could begin to ascend with certainty.

Coming home to the reality that the only thing she had ever known wasn’t part of her identity anymore had initially sent her straight into a depressive episode. Luckily, or unluckily, depending on what frame of mind she approached it with, life had promptly kicked her in the ass and forced her to get herself and Mallory on solid ground before she could let her fractured mind wander enough to figure out how to move forward again.

With each day that her peers moved forward, she felt herself falling further and further behind. Christen could sense herself once again becoming constantly and despondently adrift from what normal was supposed to feel like. It certainly didn’t feel normal to sit on the literal sidelines of a pitch, every part of her body on edge trying not to remember what the last time she had been within those crisp white lines felt like.

“She’s so happy you’re here Chris. You can see it in her energy, she’s all over the place out there already,” Tyler remarks from beside her as Mal’s team, dressed in their long-sleeved blue kits, takes the field.

Christen watched in awe as Mal stood in the middle of a familiar huddle, offering some indecipherable words of encouragement to her team before they all broke off into their starting positions.

_When did she get to be so mature?_

Christen sighed, knowing that there wasn’t a good enough explanation to have stayed away from the bleachers for so long beside her own obstinacy. Playing was one thing, and she had good reason to be wary of competing again. But missing out on being a part of Mal’s cheering section was inexcusable and she knew it.

Before she can wallow in her guilt for too long, coffee quickly growing cold in her hands, she moves to zip up the puffy jacket that covers the top of her thighs. As she looks back up she spots a familiar silhouette on the tail end of Mal’s bench. A tan beanie draws her eye from the other side of the field, the familiar unkept golden brown hair that flowed out from underneath it was unmistakably Tobin’s. She looked deep in conversation with a member of the coaching staff over a clipboard in front of them, glancing up every few minutes to watch the game with sharp intensity, pointing to one player or another.

“Is that Tobin?” The question falls out of her mouth before she has the chance to hold it in, staring reverently over to where Tobin sat exactly as she had been at the kitchen island the other night. The image of Tobin sitting there fidgeting with her bag of rice was burned into her mind’s eye at that point.

Legs splayed apart, knees pointing out opposite directions, but her hands stuffed deep into jacket pockets this time. That playful glimmer in her eyes had been replaced with a laser focus on the players who whizzed past her, disrupting Christen’s view.

“Who?” Alyssa pulls the sunglasses perched on the bridge of her nose down a few centimetres to follow the direction of Christen’s gaze.

“Toe what?” Tyler holds Christen’s elbow with one hand and reaches the other up in front of her eyes, squinting off into the distance dramatically.

“Okay, thanks for being super casual and not at all obvious about that,” Christen reaches down to pull her phone out of her pocket, thinking she might pretend to text or scroll through Instagram for a second to play it off in case Tobin had noticed.

Alyssa knocks an elbow into Christen’s side, rendering her a little off balance. She groans as her fingers catch the cool exterior of the metal flip phone. _Nevermind_.

“We’re just messing with you…of course we know who Tobin is. She works for Reign’s academy on player development strategy…she drops in on tons of games for all the teams. Mal is pretty obsessed with her.”

She turns to Alyssa, narrowing her eyes. “You knew?”

“…I didn’t _not_ know.” Alyssa squeaks out, “Why do you care so much?”

Christen completely avoids the latter question.

“You guys are insufferable.” She whines, focusing her eyes once again on the game in front of her, “I just don’t get why neither of you thought to mention that the other night when we were at her house?”  
  


“Oh, I thought about mentioning it…” Tyler trails off, mumbling quietly. “Thought about it for all of ten seconds before I realized that any mention of a professional soccer player within a ten-mile radius of you would mean an immediate end to our evening.”

“…am I really that bitter?” Christen says under her breath, unconsciously allowing it to escape her mouth. Wondering once again why she had let herself become this undone again over a game.

It wasn’t the first time she’d given up football. This time was different though. It was less like a break where the opportunity to come back could hang around in her peripheral vision, clinging to a fraying thread of hope that one day there would be a way for her to find her way onto a team again. The last time she had stuffed her muddy cleats into her training bag it had been with no intentions of returning.

Tyler and Alyssa exchanged a lingering look, sideways eyes passing over Christen’s ponytail of curls, trading some unspoken dialogue that she wasn’t privy to.

“Wait did you say professional?”

Before either of them can respond, the whistle blows.

\--

Christen manages to keep her flight instinct at bay by hyper-focusing on Mal’s pink pre-wrap racing up and down the field, not allowing her eyes to wander over to the bench more than once. She had promised Mal she would pay attention.

She scores a goal off a corner kick and assists Rose with another goal in stoppage time, but she does send a few balls sailing straight over the net off her left foot, just like she had been worried about.

She had a list forming in the back of her mind with every single reason why helping Mal would only serve to further complicate her feelings towards the portions on her plate intermingling, but Christen couldn’t stop herself anymore. Already thinking of some drills she could give Mal to improve her precision. Mal _wanted_ her help and if there was one person in the world she couldn’t refuse, it was Mal.

The final whistle blows and Mal and her teammates quickly celebrate a hard-fought victory before zoning in on their coach’s post-match debrief.

  
Christen looks up from typing a text out to Becky, growing frustrated with the cumbersome hassle of a numbered keypad to see Mal walking across the grass with Tobin. They looked deep in some kind of conversation about the game based on the older girl’s expressive hand gestures.

They stop in the middle of the pitch, facing the goal that Mal had missed a few shots on and Tobin sets a ball down between them so they can pass it around while they talk. She pauses a few times to demonstrate a body position over the ball 0r move shows the movement of a few players animatedly with her hands.

Mal smiles excitedly and high-fives Tobin who turns back to the group of girls to call over one of Mal’s newer teammates, Bethany. Mal looks aimlessly around the crowd that had begun to disperse across the expansive grounds surrounding the field before spotting the trio underneath a tree beside the bleachers.

“What did you think?” she asks between pants after sprinting over to where they waited patiently, duffle bag bouncing behind her.

“Crushed it, Mal. My heart was going out to the other team’s goalie during that second half. You guys were relentless,” Alyssa replies, undoubtedly thinking back to days when she found herself between the posts with a weak defensive line in front of her.

Mal turns to Christen, apprehension flashing across her face. She pulls Mal tightly into her side, “You were magic out there. I’m so glad I got to see you play today,” she whispers into her sister’s ear. Mal pulls back to meet her eyes, beaming up at Christen, sweaty skin glistening in the late afternoon sun.

“Can we go get lunch? I’m starving,” Tyler moans, “and I’m willing to bet the only thing Chris has eaten today was that latte.”

Christen starts to follow the others back towards the parking lot but stops abruptly on her heel.

"I'll catch up with you guys in a minute," Christen says quietly slipping behind the bleachers, back to where she can see a tan beanie bobbing up and down on a now deserted field.

Tyler and Alyssa barely notice that she’s not right behind them, too preoccupied with Mal up in front of them trying to see how many cartwheels she can do in a row across the wet grass. The two of them scrambling to collect her duffle bag and discarded warm-up jacket behind her.

Christen halts at the edge of the field. Refusing to cross the little white line that separated regular grass from the sanctity of a pitch. A line she never used to think about now stood like a barbed-wire fence in front of her, _do not cross the line._

"I owe you a bag of rice," she surprises herself with the strength of her voice that carries across the expanse of space between them as Tobin moves closer to the border that she wasn’t even aware was dividing the two of them.

The brunette juggles a ball underneath her feet, the rhythmical tap of the perfectly inflated sphere meeting a leather shoe brings back that familiar ache in Christen's chest.

"I'm preeeeeetty sure I recall telling you that it was yours to keep," Tobin doesn't even look up from her feet, the ball still jumping from one side of her body to the other.

If she was caught off guard by Christen’s presence she wasn’t showing it.

"Right well, I guess I'll just-," Christen basically whispers, all the life from her voice gone once again.

_It was all in my head. She was drinking, I was drinking. Nothing more than a weird exchange._

She surprises herself even more with what she says next.

"I uhm…I wanted to apologize...for the other night. That's not usually the kind of thing that I talk about with strangers. Or…well.. at all...like ever I guess...so I'm sorry if it made you uncomfortable." Tobin’s not sure whether Christen’s mouth or her animated hands are moving faster.

"I'm not sorry," She smirks, abruptly stopping the ball under her left foot. "Did you...look at the Ziploc bag super carefully at all?"

Christen cocks her head to one side, looking at the brunette quizzically, brows shifting together like magnets.

"I'm going to take that as a hard 'no'. When you get home, give it a look over and see if anything catches your eye." Tobin says with a mischievous grin, chuckling a little to herself at the bemusement on Christen’s face.

The ball is back up in the air, moving effortlessly up between Tobin’s shoulder blades where she holds it with such ease Christen can’t help but smile. Witnessing Tobin in her element made her feel comforted in a way that she hadn’t since she had been the one juggling a ball on freshly manicured grass without a care in the world. 

“Will do, Tobin.”

“Hey, Christen?” Tobin lets the ball roll off her back, dropping onto the torn-up grass with a small ‘thud’. She casually crosses the ball off her right heel behind her back over to where Christen is planted.

Christen doesn’t respond, her gaze fixed on the football that’s only inches away from her big toe. _You could just kick it back to her._

Every hair on her arm stands on edge, partially because the phantom warmth of that hand on her thigh is still fresh in her mind. Also because she hasn’t touched a ball in months and she’s beginning to wonder if she’s forgotten how to use her feet.

Tobin clears her throat, waiting expectantly for a response or the ball to be returned.

“Yeah?” Christen breathes out, positive that Tobin couldn’t have possibly heard her, and hazily aware of the fact she probably looked like she’d never casually kicked a football around in her life. _Or formed a coherent thought for that matter._

Some other part of her anticipates what Tobin is about to ask before the words start to cascade out of her mouth. Rather than let her let them out into the frigid fall air, unable to be put back, unable to be avoided if they're actualized, Christen racks her brain for ways to keep that question far away until she knows how to answer it without turning her brain inside out. 

She taps the ball back across to where Tobin is standing, holding her breath until she hears it land softly on the edge of a sneaker. They both look up, gold meeting green for the first time since that night. Those soft unwavering eyes wrapped her in a familiar kind of comfort she didn’t know she was missing until it was sinking around her like a weighted blanket.

That tiny white line that had become an insurmountable wall in Christen’s psyche looked smaller than it had in a long time.

“CHRISTEN?? Are you coming?!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as i hope you've surmised, Mal is Christen & Tyler's younger sister (sorry Channing got voted off the fic-verse island). i also want to just quickly note that this is entirely fictional and based on my own imagination not any genuine impression of the Press's at all. 
> 
> reading your comments brought such a smile to my face last time, thank you to everyone who has taken the time to leave your feedback...it means much more to me than you'll ever know.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello all, hope you are safe and well wherever in the world you find yourself.  
> this chapter is a little shorter as i'm in the middle of some exams but i wanted to get something up this week.  
> thank you as always for continuing to read!

Sitting through lunch after Mal’s game was absolute torture. Mal had been animatedly lining up a schedule for her to train that left-footed cross this week with Christen's assistance. 

All Christen could think about was what she had missed on that bag of rice. Of course, it would be the one time that her normal levels of hyper observation failed her. Her knee bounced up and down incessantly as she moved salad around on her plate.

Alyssa reaches underneath the table from her spot beside Mal and pushes a hand down on Christen’s thigh to get her to stop.

“You could have just invited her to come to lunch with us,” Alyssa glances at her sideways, barely concealing a smirk.

“Invited who?” Mal pipes up, completely oblivious to Christen’s rising body temperature.

Tyler and Alyssa both look at Christen expectantly, waiting for her to say something. When she stares back with a blank expression, they both exchange a glance across the table, rolling their eyes at how stubborn Christen had become.

“Either that or asked someone with a phone from this century to let you run the background check I know you’re about to go full FBI agent on the minute you get home.”

Tyler says in between bites, just trying to get Christen to give them any type of reaction.

“Background check on whoooooo,” Mal whines, growing frustrated that she’s not savvy to some secret her older sisters are keeping.

As soon as she and Mal make it in the door to their apartment, Christen is digging through the garbage trying to find the stupid Ziploc bag she’d thrown out last night after stuffing her phone into a drawer where it would rest in peace.

_It has to be in here._

“You didn’t take out the garbage last night did you?” Christen turns to Mal who looks down at her older sister frantically scrounging around in an uncharacteristic state of disarray.

“What on earth has gotten into you? Can you really not make it one full weekend without a scroll through the ol’ gram?” Mal chuckled.

“Mallory,” Christen closes her eyes and exhales sharply.

“No. I didn’t…good luck with…whatever all this is.” She gestures between Christen and the trashcan, face mixed equally with amusement and concern.

Christen pushes her forehead into the cool metal of the garbage can, silently cursing at herself for becoming so unravelled.

Mal just shakes her head, laughing at Christen before stalking off her to her room.

Christen sits in the middle of the kitchen, crosses her legs, closes her eyes and starts to breathe slowly to calm her mind.

_Focus._

Nobody had ever formally taught Christen to meditate, she had picked it up out of necessity. Now it was part of most days at one point or another.

While working out, while dealing with difficult people, while hiding in the cooler at work, while digging through the garbage apparently. All she had to do was to wait- and just breathe. She had found over time that meditation could happen whenever, wherever, in whatever situation she was in.

She had learned that her mind might trick her when faced with heavy tasks but mini-meditation, as she termed it, helped pull her off auto-pilot. It wasn’t always perfect, but it did always help.

“You good?” Mal asked her on her way through the kitchen to put her bag away and hop in the shower, all too familiar with Christen's meditation face. Christen simply nodded and hoped she didn’t mention this little guffaw to Tyler.

_If it’s not in here, it wasn’t meant to be._

\--

The infamous bag had been in the garbage, crumpled and smudged underneath that morning’s coffee grounds. Christen had rinsed it off to reveal faintly visible blue sharpie in that same loopy chicken scratch from Tobin and Alex’s nametags at the house party.

There were a few numbers, presumably, they were part of Tobin’s phone number and underneath she had signed it ‘ _just from, t_ ’.

Christen had to giggle, the childlike font was exactly what she should have expected Tobin’s writing to look like. The problem was that because of the damage that her poor Ziploc bag had endured combined with the minuscule size of Tobin’s writing she could barely make out the signature, let alone the entire ten digits of her phone number.

She traced the outline of Tobin’s signature with the tip of her finger on the hard floor in the middle of her kitchen, contemplating her next move while listening to the water running through the pipes in the adjacent wall. The sound of Mal belting off-key at the top of her lungs in the shower echoing through her apartment.

T? Was that a sign that it was okay for her to use that nickname? 

She had resisted the urge to retreat to her room and type Tobin’s name into the Google search bar on her laptop. So what if she plays soccer? So what if her house looks like it belongs to a frat boy? So what if Christen usually lets someone else do the chasing? Was writing your number on a plastic bag even chasing?

A million and one what-ifs waited just beside Christen, begging for the opportunity to cloud her judgement before she could remember the promise she had made to herself only a few minutes prior. 

_Okay, well technically the bag was there. So trying to acquire the missing numbers isn’t a violation of the laws of the universe right?_

She pulls the pink phone out, navigating through the menus at a painstaking pace through the contacts she had compiled late last night until she finds the one she's looking for. 

“Do you have Tobin’s number?”

“Oh no absolutely not. I am not about to get in the middle of setting you up with another coworker of mine. Evan was a mess after the two of you broke up. Not a hot mess, not a cute mess, just a straight-up mess.” Megan said, the usual lighthearted lilt in her tone completely gone.

“And that’s my fault somehow?” Christen knew that it probably was her fault, the speed at which she’d moved on compared to the way he hadn’t would have driven her crazy if the roles had been reversed. “She tried to write it on the Ziploc bag that my phone was in but my clammy hands must have rubbed a few of the numbers off so now I have a smudged mess of blue sharpie and like four digits total.”

“You owe me Pinoe,” Christen tried to remind her as neutrally as possible,. “I’m calling you off a hot pink Motorola Razr.”

“That I do but you’re on your own on this one. You need to get back in the game in more ways than one and I think Tobin would be perfect for _all_ of that but I am not allowed to get involved.”

“I can’t believe you guys are all being so weird about this,” Christen rolled her eyes as if Megan could see her expression through the phone.

“We made a pact. No more workplace setups. We learned our lesson.”

“Are you kidding me? A pact?”

“It was for the good of the office dynamic.”

“Who said anything about a setup? Tobin doesn’t even work there! Like not in the office at least…”

“Close enough. A pact is a pact and I am legally bound to my duties,” Megan was unrelenting, “speaking of which…duty calls. I better get back to it. Are you coming to Global Fest this weekend?”

Christen had completely spaced on that front, she forgot the last outdoor event of their season was so soon already. Global Fest was a huge weeklong festival in downtown Seattle where representatives from a bunch of different countries put on firework shows and cultural presentations. The company Tyler and the rest of the gang worked for had a food truck there every year. 

Christen used to love taking Mal and pumping her full of sugar to watch the fireworks from their favourite secret spot on a nearby hill. She had missed the last few while she was away and honestly, she was not looking forward to the level of chaos that came with an event that big, so she had told Mal they could go as long as she didn’t protest if they left before the fireworks.

“Mal wants to go for a bit so I’ll probably swing by with her and Rose on Friday night, gotta ship them off to a tournament in Portland the next day.”

“Sounds good Pressy!” Without another word, Megan was gone. 

As the token ‘little sister’ of the friend group, they all liked to rile her up about her dating life now and again. Although they had given her a lovely reprieve from all of that since she had been back. It seemed the honeymoon period was over and that they had declared her fit enough to resume usual activities in all aspects of her life.

But even this level of co-conspiring among them was unusual.

It was slightly terrifying to think about being back to ‘normal’, Christen didn’t even know what normal looked like anymore. She never had a chance at normal.

She didn’t remember how to feel in abundance anymore, sometimes she wondered if her bones were the only things holding her body together. All the important parts, the pieces of her that made her feel like _herself_ were still floating around in the world somewhere waiting to be found again. She had gotten into the habit of chalking the hollowness up to other things.

Sometimes a smile was just a rehearsal, waiting for her soul to come back from where she sent it to rest. She was just yearning for the other side of this water she was treading, just digesting a bad meal, just late getting to sleep. Maybe she was getting better at hiding it, or maybe she was just getting better.

_That had to be a good thing right?_

_\--_

I feel a bit far away and my ears feel.. clogged?

_It had been the first time without any disassociation for over 24 hours when Christen got the go-ahead to work out. The team's strength trainer went out of her way to fit her in for a quick half-hour core session just to take advantage of her feeling good enough to come. And it had felt so nice to do something, to be capable of doing something. She had even managed to beat a side plank record she held before the accident._

_But now the headache was back._

_It all happened so quickly and watching the replay hundreds of times had blurred the lines between what Christen actually remembered and what she just thought she could remember._

_Her memory of that day consisted only of a snippet here and a snippet there. Red Jell-O that she was fed by the nurses. A soft, light blue fleece blanket. But mostly, that tense time when Tyler and Mal waited anxiously by the phone to hear whether she would regain normal brain functioning was, to Christen, just a fog._

_Teammates filtered into the dressing room, one after another, greeting each other with hugs and smiles. Their voices reverberated off the wooden lockers that lined the walls, filled with boisterous laughter and animated conversations between friends catching up, captains checking in, and teammates making fun of each other._

_They all gathered around the centre of the room in their pre-game huddle over the logo painted on the floor._

But I couldn’t.

_The sounds of their laughter pierced her ears. The thud of their cleats clicking against the hard floor vibrated against the perimeter of her skull. The sounds of thunderous applause resembled nails on a chalkboard._

_Christen couldn’t turn off a smile if she tried. She was always cracking jokes and slipping in quick one-liners to get underneath her teammates' skin. That was a part of herself that she had grown to love while being in Sweden, everything had been so much lighter here and she was finally starting to come out of her shell._

_But in that dressing room, it felt like every smile, every laugh and every joke was the biggest lie. For months, she had been trying to put on this façade that she was still the same Christen she had always been –_ believe me, I tried _– but after her vision went black on the field, a little part of her remained on that pitch even after the stretcher had carried her out of the stadium off to a waiting ambulance._

_There was no denying she wasn’t as sharp anymore. Her ability to remain quick-witted and be present in the moment had disappeared._

I need to go lie down.

_The only thing that could be done to remedy the feeling of Keebler elves carving away at her skull from the inside out, was to curl up in bed in a dark room, holding her head in her hands._

_Those were the moments where Christen's mind went down dark and twisted back alleyways that she wished it wouldn't. For the first time in her life, the idea of disappearing seemed like a better alternative to living life in constant suffering._

_She cried herself to sleep every night in the Damallsvenskan apartment provided to her by the club. As soon as the door behind her shut and the click of the deadbolt reminded her that she was finally alone, it was like a trigger that she could finally fall apart in private. Everything felt so far away from her now._

They warned you that feeling more emotional and sad was part of post-concussion syndrome _, but nothing could have prepared her for what she was going to experience._

_In the process of blending the physicality of American soccer with the traditional European style of technique in football, Christen had created a somewhat unpredictable playing style, always wearing her heart on her sleeve and making decisions in the box without fear. And so far it had served her well, helping her team qualify for the Swedish Cup while leading the league in goals scored._

_When that bouncing ball came in, She didn’t think twice about running towards the goalie for a play that most forwards at the highest level would avoid. That bouncing ball was the last thing she saw before waking up in the back of an ambulance, blurry faces of an assistant trainer and medic speaking haphazardly in Swedish standing over her and saying her name._

_“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she drastically slurred as the surging need to vomit coursed from her belly up to her throat, “I’m fine, let me up.”_

_The call came a few weeks later._

_"Christen, we want you to focus on getting better. We've decided to replace you with a different option for the upcoming National Team camp."_

_She heard the words but they felt far away, an ocean was between her and that camp. Communicating was still hard, the words were in there somewhere rattling around against the front of her skull as she desperately coaxed them to find the tip of her tongue._

What are four things you can see right now?

_The neurologist that she saw for follow-ups advice wringing through her congested head. If you can find four environmental or spatial relational points directly around you, it's a lot harder to drift from the present moment._

I can see my shoes sitting by the front door.

I can hear the neighbour’s dog barking.

I can smell my dinner getting cold on the counter.

I can feel my dreams breaking like glass.

_"I understand, hopefully, I can make it to another camp soon."_

_"We hope so too Christen, take care." the click of the phone disconnecting sounds just like the deadbolt in her door._

I need air.

_That familiar feeling of hangover became all she knew._

_She couldn’t hang out with her teammates in their adjacent living room that connected the furnished apartments because the combination of their voices and the TV was too much to handle. She wasn’t able to watch her team play the remaining two games of the season because the lights on the field and the music in the locker room felt like being tortured. She wasn’t able to Facetime Mal or Tyler because when thinking about more than one thing at once made her brain hurt._

_But the physical symptoms had a source. She knew her head hurt because she had been kicked. It was the anxiety and the depression that she couldn’t understand. It was the fact that she would wake up every morning with a pit in her stomach and an overwhelming sense of doom that made Christen want to run and hide._

_The worst part about it all was the fact this was not a visible injury. It wasn’t like a broken arm that everyone could see, that could be proven with x-rays, that the doctor could put into a cast and tell her how long it would take to heal._

_"Hi, Chris!" Mal's little voice crackled through the phone, "How's your head?"_   
  


_"It's always good when I'm talking to you, sunshine. You're like my magic headache cure...did you know that?”_

_Christen says, silently thankful that Facetiming was still off the table, quickly wiping away the hot tears that were rolling down her cheeks._

_There is no rehab. There is no clear diagnosis. There is no timeline. The only thing that she could do was sit in dim rooms and think about everything that was taken away from her, think about how much she missed her mom, think about how this was not supposed to be her life._

_The only time that Christen felt some relief from the constant suffering was when she talked to Mal._

_At least for a couple of minutes, the headache disappeared, and she finally had some reprieve from the constant pain. After a call ended and her hangover state returned the following morning, she reverted to her regular thought process._

If I jump over my fifth-story fire escape, will all this grief and anxiety go away?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if any of you have ever had a concussion, i hope you'll feel christen on this. a concussion changed my life and took me away from my sport too.  
> how are you feeling about this all so far? too fast? too slow? excited to watch the game today?


End file.
